


Identity

by Energybeing



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Gen, Road Trips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-31
Updated: 2015-06-11
Packaged: 2018-04-02 03:44:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 18,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4044625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Energybeing/pseuds/Energybeing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They'd all had numerous fake identities over the years. They'd discarded them when they were no longer needed. But never before had they actually had to live as ordinary people. Some of them find it harder to adjust to than others.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Author’s note: the events of this story take place after Season 3 of Person of Interest, which, sadly, I don’t own. Please don’t sue me for using it. The story was written before season 4 aired, so it ignores everything from there.

It had been years since Shaw had had an ordinary job with ordinary wages that kept ordinary hours.

She didn’t like it.

Sure, she understood why it was necessary. If she didn’t lead an ordinary, squeaky clean life, Samaritan would find her and some Decima operative would shoot her in the middle of the street. Shaw would rather live an ordinary life than have no life at all.

Still, she missed her old job. It had been interesting, and dangerous, and it wasn’t boring. She didn’t have to hide who she was.

Shaw was grateful that the identity that Root and her geeks had made for her was a doctor. At the very least, working in the ER was interesting. It was difficult to miss your old life when you’re trying to stabilize someone who has been in a car accident.

For all that, she couldn’t help but think that it was only a matter of time before Reese staggered in and asked her to patch up some unorthodox injuries, or Harold would turn up and say that he needed her help shutting down Samaritan. Shaw was positive that it was only a matter of time before someone at Decima realised what Root had done, fixed it, and then came after her. Understandably, this made Shaw a little paranoid.

She remembered when, a couple of days into her new life, one of her fellow doctors had tapped her on the shoulder. Only an extreme effort of will and a conscious knowledge that the kind of person she was supposed to be now wouldn’t react with violence to a simple surprise contact stopped her from spinning around and punching him in the throat.

Shaw had got a little better after that. She didn’t jump at shadows quite so much.

However, when Harold actually had shown up while she was working in the clinic, Shaw had been surprised. Even though it had only been two weeks since Samaritan had come online (she had been undercover longer than that before), she had begun to think that this was it. That they couldn’t stop Samaritan, so all they could do was live under its radar.

She hadn’t been entirely wrong.

“I’m working on a solution.” Harold said quietly. “But it will take time. Samaritan may be an open system, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to access. You’ll have to wait. I understand that may be difficult for you, Ms Shaw, but-“

Shaw waved away his words. “Yeah, Harold, I'm fine. But you and Root are supposed to be some kind of super geniuses, aren’t you? Can't you come up with something? You built the Machine! Surely you can figure out a way to take another one offline?”

Harold looked at her coolly. “I didn’t build the Machine in two weeks, Ms Shaw. And I had access to much better equipment than I do now. As for Ms Groves, I have no idea what she is doing. I don’t even know where she is.”

“What? You don’t know where Root is? Can’t you ask your Machine?”

Harold sighed. “What part of “act like ordinary citizens” are you having difficulty with, Ms Shaw? I must be the lowly IT person that my cover states me to be. At least until I know more. Be patient, Ms Shaw. We will find a way.”

Shaw hadn’t commented on that, and Harold had told her a little about what he and Reese were up to (apparently Reese was a guard in an armoured truck. Harold seemed to find this amusing, for some reason). Shaw asked how Bear was, and was told that he was well. She missed Bear.

Then Harold had left, and she wasn’t sure that she would ever see him again. Not until he found a solution, at least.

~*~

Shaw disliked clinic duty. In the ER, she knew that what people really needed was a doctor with a clear head and steady hands. They didn’t want her to be nice, they wanted her to save their lives. The people in the clinic, however, wanted her to be the epitome of a sensitive medical professional. Most of the time she wished she could just tell them not be so stupid, or take better care of themselves. She wished Root could’ve found her a hospital that didn’t make her do clinic duty.

After almost losing it when someone who was clearly five months pregnant asked her timorously if she were pregnant, Shaw was just about ready to take Decima on singlehandedly.

Then Root came in. Afterwards, Shaw never had any memory of getting to her feet or moving to stand in front of Root. She was just there. “God, Root, what are you doing here? Tell me you’re not going to kidnap me again. You are, aren’t you?” Shaw hissed.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Doctor. I’m just here to have a check-up.” Root said. Her face was carefully blank, but her eyes were dancing as though she had just told the best joke in the world.

Shaw snorted. “Yeah, sure you were. What do you want, Root?”

Root produced a hairband and quickly swept her hair back into a loose ponytail. “I had a stapedectomy a while back. Got a cochlear implant, too. Usually that doesn’t bother me, but the last couple of days it’s been feeling a little sore around there. If you wouldn’t mind, Doctor…”

Shaw wasn’t entirely sure why Root was acting out this charade, but if the other woman was actually in pain it was perfectly reasonable to go to a doctor. And she was a doctor. So there wasn’t any harm in examining her ear.

The scar was fairly messy. Shaw wasn’t surprised, given the circumstances under which Root had recieved it. “It’s not inflamed.” Shaw said. “I’m pretty sure it’s not infected.”

“Then why does it hurt, Doctor?” Root said.

Shaw decided to play along. “I’m guessing that you’ve recently had a big change in your life. Sometimes, things like that can make our bodies react in strange ways. The pain will probably die down once you adjust.” She flashed Root a quick smile. “But feel free to come back if it doesn’t. Just try not to kidnap a doctor at gunpoint in order to sort it out.”

Root smiled. “I guess I should’ve seen that, as a psychotherapist.” She said softly. “Thank you, Doctor.”

Shaw shrugged. “It’s not like I broke into Decima or anything. It’s no problem.”

Root began to leave, but hesitated at the door. Turning, she said “It’s good to see you, Sameen. Tell Harold he’s not the only one trying to fix things.”

Root left. Shaw hadn’t the faintest ideas of what to make of the meeting. When she had finished her shift in the clinic and gone back to the ER, she still hadn’t figured it out. Nor had she by the time she got home.


	2. Chapter Two

One of the psychiatrists at the hospital was acting suspiciously. He’d been called in when one of the patients that had arrived the day after Root’s visit had overdosed himself in a suicide attempt. Whenever he was around her, the psychiatrist Dr Nathan Greene kept darting glances at her, and acting oddly. Shaw thought that he was probably a Decima operative, but he wasn’t quite sure if she was actually Shaw.

Shaw bluejacked his phone, hoping that any communication he made with Greer would give her a head start when she had to make a run for it. Only the fact that she knew Decima would come down on her like a ton of bricks if she did anything more unusual stopped her from killing him then and there.

He didn’t make contact with Decima, though. His messages were exactly the kind of thing she would expect an ordinary person to have.

However, when Greene came back the next day to tell her how the patient was doing (something that he really didn’t have to do) and acted in the same way, Shaw began to suspect that Greene had been told to keep tabs on her rather than try and take her out. The only reason she could come with that Greer wouldn’t try to have her killed because she was a threat to Samaritan was because she might lead him to Root. Given that Root had managed to pull the cyber wool over Samaritan’s eyes, Shaw suspected that Greer would do a lot to get his hands on her.

After he left, Greene got a message from someone bearing the enigmatic title of ‘G’. It could be Greer, giving him instructions. The message said “Did you ask her out?”

So. Code. Shaw doubted that it was anything good. She should neutralise Greene before he could do alert Greer to… well, anything.

Then she saw Greene was making a response. “Come on, Gary. I met her yesterday. I’ve barely spoken ten words to her. I doubt she’d appreciate it if I told her ‘I want your body’.”

Shaw rolled her eyes. Greene wasn’t Decima at all. He just fancied her. She was really getting paranoid. On the other hand, the government and Decima were actually out to get her, so maybe she was just being realistic.

Shaw didn’t want to get into a relationship, not even a casual one. In order to keep her cover, she shouldn’t form any attachments. Admittedly, for her, not forming attachments was easy enough, but relationships were a bad idea.

On the other hand, Decima would be catch up to her eventually. She was mildly surprised that they hadn’t turned up already. She might be able to use Greene to get out of the hospital safely, if Decima came for here. At the very least she could hide in his office. Besides, if she was friendly with people they would be less likely to betray her.

So, when Greene came by the following day for no particular reason and asked her out to coffee, Shaw said yes.

~*~

Shaw wasn’t early, she was sure, but she still arrived at the designated café before Greene. She made her way to a nearby table, but a brunette appeared out of nowhere, grabbed her arm and steered her to a different table.

“So, I’ve got bad news and worse news.” Root said, sitting opposite Shaw. “Which do you want to hear first?”

Shaw rolled her eyes. “It’s good to see you too, Root.”

Root smiled briefly. “Hello, Sameen. We don’t have time for pleasantries. Let’s skip them. There, are your sensibilities soothed now?”

Shaw nodded. She wasn’t a fan of pleasantries anyway. “What’s up with the table switch?”

“We’re away from prying eyes.” Root answered. She smiled genuinely this time. “I stole something from the Decima playbook. Samaritan can't hear or see us here. We can talk freely.”

“Okay then.” Shaw said. “I’ll take the bad news first.”

“Hersh is dead. Sorry.”

Shaw nodded again. “I guessed as much. The Vigilance bomb?”

“Yes.” Root replied. “I'm sorry.”

“He could’ve been useful.” Shaw said. “Okay, so what’s the worse news?”

“Samaritan is running a three-month diagnostic program that will find and remove everything I did to keep us safe.” Root said gravely.

Shaw sat perfectly still for a few seconds. “How do you know?”

Root shrugged. “I asked a few Decima agents.”

“How’d you get them to talk to you without throwing themselves off of a building?” Shaw asked curiously.

“I was very persuasive.” Root said, looking at Shaw intently.

It took Shaw a couple of seconds to understand what Root was talking about. It wasn’t like she was unexperienced with that kind of thing, from either side. “Fair enough.” Shaw replied. “So we’ve got three months to find a way to shut down Samaritan.”

Root shook her head. “No. Three months since it came online. We have less than two months now.”

It was Shaw’s turn to shrug. “Oh well. I'm kind of surprised that Decima hasn’t found me already. They know I trained to be a physician. If I was Greer, I’d hunt through every hospital in the city.”

Root smiled wryly. “What do you take me for, Sameen? Do you really think that I’d just let us disappear without a trace? The same program that keeps our new identities of the radar shows us, the real us, splitting up and getting out of the country. You’re supposed to be in Iraq, for example.”

“So Decima isn’t looking for us then?” Shaw said. Then she saw Root’s expression, and added “What? You’re looking at me like I'm an idiot. What is it?”

“You’re not an idiot, Sameen.” Root said gently. “But neither is Greer. He knows us. He knows we wouldn’t just leave without a fight. That’s why Samaritan is running its diagnostic. He suspects that we did something to it. He’ll doesn’t know where we are, but that doesn’t mean that he’s not looking.”

Shaw leaned forward. “Tell me you have a plan, Root. You or Harold. Because if I have less than two months to live, I'm sure as hell not going to spend it as some civilian.” 

Root didn’t answer. She just stood up and said “Your date will be here in a moment. Ironic, isn’t it, that the psychiatrist is attracted to the sociopath?”

Root left, and Shaw said to herself “There’s nothing wrong with being a sociopath. Besides, you're at least as sociopathic as I am.” Shaw scowled. “Now I'm talking to myself. That woman is really annoying.”

Nathan slid into the chair opposite her. “Hello.”

~*~

Later, when Shaw was at home, she tried to come up with as many ways as she could to take down Samaritan. She did the same thing every night, on the off-chance that she came up with a new idea. 

She knew lots of… unsavoury people who would be willing to do a job, any job, for money. Reese probably knew a few more, and Root definitely had a few contacts. If Root or Harold could come with some kind of program to locate all the Samaritan facilities, it was possible that they could blow all of them up at once. The trouble was, an operation like that would undoubtedly take more than two months to complete, and Shaw wasn’t keen on the idea of posthumous revenge.

Sadly, that was the best that she could come up with. Hopefully one of the others could do better.


	3. Chapter Three

Decima had arrived. Shaw could see them. They were disguised as doctors, but Shaw had been at the hospital long enough that she knew every doctor in the hospital by sight. Anyway, none of the doctors she’d ever met (well, none in this hospital, at least) had a gun hidden under their coats.

Fortunately, they didn’t seem to know she was here, not if the way they were searching was any indication. Shaw guessed that Greer was routinely checking through every hospital in New York. It was what she would have done, if she had his manpower.

This meant that, if she could elude their search until they had gone away, then Greer wouldn’t realise that Shaw was here. She would be safe, at least until Samaritan finished running it’s diagnostic.

The problem was, Decima would doubtlessly have people at every exit, as well as a few on the roof. They would then proceed to comb through every room until they found her. Thankfully, it was a large hospital, so this might take a while. On the other hand, Shaw suspected that Greer would’ve gone on a recruitment drive as soon as Samaritan came online, so there would probably be Decima operatives scattered around to stop her form evading the search by hiding somewhere they had already looked.

Thankfully, this was where Nathan came in. Shaw knew he would be useful at some point. She could only hope that Decima hadn’t searched that wing of the hospital yet.

~*~

“Hello, Dr Greene.” Shaw said, coming into Nathan’s office to see that he had a patient. “Would you mind if I grabbed you for a consult?”

Nathan turned to his patient. “Do you mind if I’m gone for a few minutes?”

The patient looked down at their hands and said quietly “Okay. We were almost out of time anyway.”

Nathan followed Shaw out into the hallway. “Okay. So where’s the patient?”

Shaw hated involving civilians. She would rather avoid this, if possible. However, it was also the easiest solution and the one that was most likely to succeed. “There is no patient. Truth is, there’s some people who are after me. Bad people. They’re here, looking for me. If they find me…” Shaw trailed off meaningfully.

Nathan’s eyes went wide. “What? What kind of people? Why are they-“

That was why Shaw didn’t like working with civilians. They always panicked and became stupid. “There’s no need to explain. I need to hide until they’re gone.”

Nathan swallowed. “Yes, yes, of course. Um, how would you do that, exactly?”

Shaw thought for a moment. Decima would search every room, under some kind of pretence. Probably someone would come in disguised as an electrician or something like that. Therefore, the only people who wouldn’t leave the room would logically be hiding something. So hiding in a cupboard wouldn’t work out. She needed to get out of there.

She could only hope that the Decima agents wouldn’t start showing her photograph around. They probably wouldn’t, as that kind of thing tends to blow covers, but if they did they would quickly find out that she wasn’t in Iraq at all. Fortunately Root had arranged it so that her details on the hospital database weren’t actually hers. The only way they would catch her was if they, well, caught her.

So, how do you get out of a building that has every exit guarded?

Shaw’s eyes instantly went to window.

~*~

Someone knocked at Greene’s door. “Morning, Doctor. I’m told you have a wiring problem. Would you mind if I come in and have a look?”

Nathan frowned. “Yes, actually, yes I would. I'm quite busy at the moment, I don’t have any time to spare. Anyway, there isn’t any wiring problem. Who told you there was?”

“More than my job’s worth to tell you that.” The ‘electrician’ chuckled. “Anyway, I have to insist. Orders are orders.”

“Orders? Whose orders?” Nathan said. “Actually, never mind that. Just get out. I'm very busy just now.”

The ‘electrician’ shouldered Nathan roughly aside. Instantly, his eyes went to window. More specifically, to the makeshift rope made out of medical tubing that dangled from it.

The Decima agent produced a gun, onto which he began methodically screwing a silencer. “I suggest you tell me where she is before I’ve finished, Doctor.” The operative said. He didn’t bother to unveil the threat, it was obvious that Nathan understood.

Before Nathan had a chance to answer, the agent found himself spun around. Shaw chopped at his arm, tore the gun from his hand and then punched him in the side of the head. He dropped like a stone.

“These people aren’t nearly as intelligent as I thought they were.” Shaw commented. “It’s obvious that medical tubing wouldn’t hold my weight.”

“Are you going to tell me what’s going on now?” Nathan said, voice quavering.

“Not just yet. Good acting, by the way.” Shaw said.

Nathan smiled modestly. “Thank you.”

~*~

A few minutes later, someone stumbled into one of the Decima agents guarding an exit. Therefore, he was too distracted to notice when Shaw came up to his partner and shot him in the chest. She held him for a few seconds until unconsciousness sank in, then arranged him against a nearby wall. Seeing that Nathan was running out of things to distract the operative with, she turned and yelled “Oh my God! I think he’s dead!”

Given that the man she had shot was now sitting in a pool of his own blood, this cry instantly caused a lot of confusion. It was easy enough for her and Nathan to get away.

The good news was that Decima weren’t going to catch her today. The bad news was that she had compromised the identity Root had made for her, which meant that Samaritan could find her again. It was only a matter of time before Decima finally caught up to her.

She could only hope that the others were doing better than she was.

A nearby payphone rang. Shaw waved away the questions that she just knew were about to burst out of Nathan, and answered it.

“Shaw, what did you do?” Root said the second Shaw put the phone next to her ear. Root didn’t sound angry. She was speaking in the calm voice that she normally had just before she burst into a room and shot absolutely everyone. “She says Samaritan can see you again. And if Samaritan can-“

“Decima can get me. I know that, Root. But they came while I was at work today. I didn’t have a lot of options.” Shaw interrupted.

“Decima found you? Why didn’t She tell me that?”

“That’s between you and your god. Anyway, I shot one and another will be waking up with a hell of a headache, but that’s better than them getting me. I'm compromised, Root. You shouldn’t even be talking to me.” Shaw said.

There was a long silence. Shaw began to wonder if Root was still there. She was just about to speak when Root said “We need to meet. All of us. She says that Decima have been searching every armoured truck for Reese, and it’s only a matter of time before they catch Harold.”

“Won’t meeting mean that Samaritan can find all of us?”

“Yes, but it’s not like we have much of a choice. Besides, I have a plan.”

Shaw smiled. “I never doubted you for a second.”

Root told her where they would meet and then hung up.

Shaw turned to Nathan. “Thanks for your help, but you should go now. Go while you still can. There’ll be some people after you, so I suggest you leave the-“

“What?” Nathan interrupted. “I'm not leaving! That man you knocked out saw my face. He knows what I look like. Besides, all my details are on file at the hospital. If I run, they’ll find me. Whoever they are, which you haven’t actually told me. I'm sticking with you. I'm guessing I’ll survive longer if I do.”

Shaw sighed. Nathan had a point. If Greer suspected that Nathan knew anything, anything at all, about where she was he wouldn’t rest until he caught him. Shaw hated protective detail, especially of clueless civilians. She wondered if she could offload Greene onto Reese when she met up. He was better suited to that kind of thing.

“Fine. But don’t ask questions, okay? In fact, just don’t talk.”

~*~

“Hello, Ms Shaw.” Harold said the moment she walked into the room. Shaw absently wondered how it was that everyone, even Bear, had managed to get there before she did. She knew that she was the first person Shaw had told. “You know that this isn’t the sort of meeting that one should bring a guest to?”

“Everyone, this is Nathan. He helped me escape, and now Decima’s after him. I think that’s enough of an introduction, don’t you?”

“Root, why are we here?” Reese said. “Shaw’s the one who blew her cover.”

“Wasn’t my fault. I’d like to see you get out without hurting anyone.” Shaw muttered.

“Because there were a dozen Decima agents who would’ve raided your truck in an hour and a half. Greer knows we’re still in New York. We can't hide.” Root explained.

“Ms Groves, we-“ Harold began to say. He didn’t get any further than that, because Root pulled out a gun and shot Nathan in the head.

Shaw took off the lab coat she was wearing and mopped up some of the blood that had splashed on her face. “Next time you shoot someone, would you mind telling me so I can move aside? I don’t really like being covered in blood.”

Reese was standing very still and staring at Root. Shaw could tell that he was having great difficulty not pulling a gun on her. “Shaw, this is generally the time when you ask why she just killed someone.”

Shaw shrugged. “She probably had a reason. She generally does.”

Root nodded. “He was Decima. He had a tracking device in his jacket.”

Shaw looked dispassionately down at Greene’s body. ”Huh. He really was a good actor, then.” She looked up at Root. “So, now that Decima knows we’re here, now might be a good time to start on that plan of yours. Would you mind telling us what it is?”

Root smiled beatifically. “We’re going to free the Machine.”


	4. Chapter Four

Shaw was fairly certain that the last response Root expected to her proclamation was “What, again? Isn’t this about the third time that you’ve tried this now?” This, therefore, was why she said it.

“Shaw’s right.” Reese said. “Besides, how’s tracking down the Machine going to help us stop Samaritan? The best it will do is lead Decima right to it. I'm betting Greer would love to get his hands on it.”

“Ms Groves isn’t suggesting that we find the Machine.” Harold said quietly. He was staring at Nathan, and had been ever since Root had shot him. He couldn’t quite bring himself to look away. Greene reminded him of a different Nathan that he hadn’t been able to save. “She’s suggesting that I change the Machine’s programming, so that it can act.”

Root nodded. “Samaritan’s currently using up a lot of processing power trying to figure out what I did to it. Once it’s done… there’s no telling what it’ll be able to do. If we can set Her free before that, we might have a chance.”

“What exactly could it do?” Shaw asked. “Doesn’t it just watch people?”

“Not necessarily.” Harold said. “That is what I built it to do. But I can teach it to do… anything, really.”

Shaw opened her mouth to question the word ‘teach’, then looked at Root and shut it again. She had seen what Root could do, with the Machine whispering in her ear. Shaw knew Harold hadn’t designed the Machine to do that – he’d specifically programmed it so that it wouldn’t. But the Machine had adapted. It still operated within its parameters, but it was doing far more than Harold had originally suspected. It was more intelligent than most of civilians she had met.

If Harold thought he could teach the Machine new tricks, who was Shaw to argue?

“Finch, why didn’t you do it before?” Reese asked. “If you can do… whatever it is that Root thinks you can do, why didn’t you?”

Harold spread his hands helplessly. “Because, unlike Greer, I do not think that the world would be better if it was run by a machine. There is a reason that I made the Machine the way I did, besides making sure that its power couldn’t be abused by the government. It could so easily begin making its own decisions about who to save, and from there it’s only a small step to deciding who should die. It’s simply too dangerous.”

Root looked at Harold sadly. “I understand your fear, Harold, I do. But Samaritan is already out there, and it can do all those things that you're frightened of. We need to strike back.” Then she smiled and tapped her ear. “Besides, the Machine is already doing things that you never planned for – She gave your caveman here a lead on my history in Texas, amongst other things – and She still wants to save people. Even now, when it knows I can't help, She’s still giving me numbers.”

Harold knew how dangerous Samaritan was. It was why he had taken so many precautions when making his Machine, so that it only did exactly what he had designed it to do, and no one could make it do anything else. But setting up another machine like Samaritan, that couldn’t be a good idea. Fighting fire with fire didn’t work, Reese’s success at shooting gun-wielding criminals notwithstanding. It was dangerous.

On the other hand, Greer was very, very dangerous even without an omniscient AI at his fingertips. He had successfully managed to set up Vigilance without the Machine figuring out his role in proceedings and giving his number to the government. Now, besides the people who worked for Decima, he had unfettered access to Shaw’s old organization. Once Samaritan finished running its diagnostic… Harold didn’t doubt that that would be worse than if he unleashed the Machine.

“Finch.” Reese said gently. “I hate to disturb your thought processes, but,” he gestured at Nathan’s body, ”if he did have a tracking device on him, we’d better move before Decima get here.”

Harold thought about Nathan, his Nathan. Ingram had known what the Machine was capable of, had known everything that it could do, and he still risked all of that by making a backdoor that allowed him access to the irrelevant numbers. Someone else could’ve found it, someone less pure, and everything Harold had tried to make would become undone.

He remembered the early days of the Machine, when he had tried to train the Machine not to just watch over him, not try and protect him from everything from a getting hit by a speeding car onwards. Samaritan wouldn’t have any of that. If Arthur Claypool had had more time with it, perhaps he could trust it… but no, he couldn’t.

He didn’t have a choice, really. When faced with everything that might happen if he released the Machine compared to what definitely would happen once Samaritan was fully operational, he would choose his Machine every time. Root was right. It was the only option.

“Alright then.” Harold said, finally managing to wrench his eyes away from the corpse. “We need to go.”

As they left the room, Shaw said “I know we need to go, but shouldn’t actually know where we’re going?”

Harold shook his head. “No. I know where the Machine is, but-“

“Wait, what?” Root exclaimed, stopping. “You know where She is? How? She hasn’t even told me that!”

“I worked it out, Ms Groves. I won't say I'm positive I know its location, but the probability is very high.” Harold said tiredly. “As I was saying, I know where it is, but I can't bring all of you. I can only bring John, and even that would be a risk.”

“Why can't you bring all of us?” Shaw said, wondering if Root was about to have a tantrum over coming so close to finally getting to the Machine but not actually being able to go there.

“I can hide myself from Samaritan. I might be able to stretch that to one other person, but I must stress the conditionality of this situation. I certainly can't hide all of us.”

Shaw was about to protest the impossibility of hiding from something that can use every camera, computer and phone in the country as a set of eyes when she remembered that Harold had managed to completely disappear from the radar when Greer had been given the feeds for New York for his beta test. Even Root hadn’t been able to find him. If Harold believed that he could keep out of Samaritan’s clutches, Shaw believed him. She also didn’t ask where the Machine was, because if she knew then it was possible that Greer might be able to find out (although, admittedly, that wasn’t very likely).

So, instead Shaw said “Does that mean I can take Bear?”

Harold smiled faintly. “Yes, of course.”

By this time, they were outside. Harold and Reese got into one car, Root slid into the passenger seat of another. Shaw made to get into a third car when Root rolled down her window and said “Aren’t you getting in?”

“Why should I?” Shaw answered. “I figure we’ll be letting Decima chase us so they don’t catch up to Reese and Harold. It would be better if we split up.”

“We’re not decoys, Sameen. We’re going to California.”

Shaw blinked. “Decima will be watching the airports, so that’s nearly two days of non-stop driving. Why on earth are we going there?”

Root smiled mysteriously. “I’ll tell you when we get there.”

“Yeah, that’s not annoying at all.” Shaw grumbled. Louder, she said “Would you mind kidnapping me at gunpoint again? Because that’s the only way you're going to get me to go on a road trip with you.”

Root shrugged. “If it makes you feel better.”

Shaw sighed and looked down at Bear. “Come on, then. But you can eat her if she keeps being so mysterious, okay?”


	5. Chapter Five

Root wasn’t nearly as annoying as Shaw had expected. She was slightly surprised about that. The other woman had pulled out a laptop and started coding something as soon as Shaw had started the ignition, and Root hadn’t said a word since then.

As Shaw made her way out of New York, Shaw debated with herself whether she should ask Root what she was doing. There was, after all, a reason that they had locked Root in a Faraday cage. Give her any technology and she was positively dangerous. Given that she was going to travel across the country with her, no doubt with Decima following them every step of the way, Shaw would quite like to know what was going on.

On the other hand, there was every chance that Root would answer with something cryptic that would only annoy Shaw. She was probably better off if she only talked to Bear on the journey.

Shaw was somewhat surprised when Root seemingly replied directly to her thoughts by saying “I can’t tell you what I'm doing. Sorry.” Root had seemed as though she was completely absorbed in whatever she was doing. She hadn’t even looked up once.

“I wouldn’t dream of asking.” Shaw replied.

“Liar.” Root said. “But if tell you, if Greer overhears even a piece of my plan-“

“Yeah, I know all that.” Shaw interrupted. Then, after a couple of seconds, she said. "Still, I hope your plan isn't just sneaking in. You're not really that good at sneaking."

"I snuck up on you just fine."

"I was asleep, Root, and I still woke up. Then you Taser'd me. Need I say more?" Shaw said. She was aware that it was kind of infantile to be critiquing Root's kidnapping months after it had happened, but on the other hand the woman was usually hyper competent and had an omniscient machine whispering in her ear, so Shaw didn't really have a lot to criticize. “Still, at least you have a reason for being secretive this time.”

Root didn’t appear to hear her. They drove on in silence for several minutes, save for the sound of Root’s fingers dancing over the keyboard. Then; “What are you talking about?”

“Come on, Root. You take some kind of perverse pleasure in being cryptic. At least now you have a proper reason.”

“I’ve always been upfront about what I want. I was put in a mental hospital because of it.” Root said.

“Uh huh.” Shaw said. “So kidnapping me to help you break someone out of a CIA facility is you being upfront, is it? I’d hate to see you coercing someone.”

“You could’ve walked away as soon as I cut your ties. You could’ve shot me. In fact, you did punch me.” Root said in a reasonable tone of voice. “Besides, I let you know what we were doing as soon as I knew. The Machine usually only tells me things in stages.”

Shaw knew that. Often enough, when working with Finch or even when she’d been unknowingly working for Control, she’d found that the person who they were following wasn’t actually a person of interest but merely an unwitting pawn, or the unwitting pawn turned out to be the terrorist. She was used to going into a situation not knowing all the facts, but that was better than going in not knowing anything at all and trusting that a machine would fill in the gaps. Besides, Finch had never had to Taser her in order to get her to work a case.

“I still say you have trust issues.” Shaw muttered.

“And yet you still decided to come with me, not knowing where we’re going or what we’re going to do when we get there.” Root said neutrally.

Shaw could guess the unspoken addendum to that statement. But she didn’t trust Root. Threatening to torture someone and kidnapping them wasn’t exactly a recognised trust building exercise. On the other hand, she had no choice. Thanks to her access to the Machine, Root could do things that even Finch couldn’t. Without her, their chances of stopping Greer dwindled to virtual nothing (not that they were astronomical to begin with). Shaw trusted Root to do that, because her life and the Machine’s very existence was in jeopardy.

~*~

They drove on in silence for several hours after that. Shaw was, usually, comfortable with silence. When people were silent, they weren’t saying something stupid. Reese understood silence. The man barely spoke above a whisper, and Shaw had never heard him raise his voice. On stakeouts, they could quite happily not talk for hours.

This silence, on the other hand, grated on her. It wasn’t just that Root’s fingers were never, ever still. They were always flying across her keyboard, the noise filling the car. Root just seemed to fill up more space than Reese did, which was odd given that Reese was at least six inches taller than her and she looked like she weighed next to nothing.

It took her a while to realise what it was, exactly. Shaw knew that Root had the Machine constantly talking to her in one ear. Root had said that it was still giving her numbers, even now. What seemed like silence to her was filled with the sound of something talking to Root. Was it any wonder that the car seemed crowded?

~*~

“Turn left ahead.” Root said suddenly. Shaw didn’t jump at the sudden noise, she was too well trained for that, but it did shock her out of the stupor that befalls anyone on a long journey.

Shaw turned left. She didn’t bother to ask why. No doubt Root would either smile mysteriously or just say that she didn’t know.

To Shaw’s mild surprise, the turning led to a gas station. A quick check of the fuel gauge revealed that, while they weren’t yet dangerously low, now would be a good time to refuel. “Huh. I guess the Machine is good for more than mass surveillance.”

Root put her laptop away and got out of the car. She stretched her arms over her head, locking her fingers together. Typing for hours without a break wasn’t the most comfortable of activities. “Caesar salad.” Root said.

Shaw was briefly nonplussed, before her stomach informed her that, yes, she was hungry, and yes, she should get something to eat. So she went in and bought a salad for Root, some jerky for Bear and a hotdog for herself.

When she came back out, Root was nowhere to be found. Shaw looked in the car and found that, not only was Root not in it, but neither was her laptop. It was empty.

Instantly, Shaw suspected that Decima had come and taken her, but she quickly saw that there weren’t any signs of a struggle. Besides, if Decima were here they would know that she was, too. They wouldn’t take just Root. Root must’ve just wandered off. Shaw had known that it was only a matter of time before Root did something stupid. She wondered where the other woman had gone.

It didn’t take her long to find out. Shaw turned around and saw Root waving to her from the cab of a truck. Shaw sighed. She supposed that it was reasonable that they swap vehicles, but she would have liked it if Root had warned her first.

She walked around to the driver’s seat and saw that there was a man off the side of the road. He looked like he was just unconscious. She got in and said “I thought we weren’t supposed to be leaving a trail for Decima. If we’re leaving bodies behind us, it’s not hard to figure out where we’ve been.”

Root took the salad. “You’re talking about the trucker? His fiancée broke off their engagement this morning. He came here, bought an unwise quantity of alcohol and passed out. All I did was roll him over there.” Then she smiled. “Besides, I left him the car keys and my credit card details. I don’t think he’ll mind too much.”

Root expected Shaw to be disapproving about that. Samaritan would doubtlessly inform Greer that Root’s credit card had been used, and they would probably track the trucker down and ask him all sorts of questions about how he came by it. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Harold would express his distaste at what she had done.

Shaw just took a bite of her hotdog and started the engine.

~*~

The salad was wilted, but Root didn’t seem to notice. Even though her hands were occupied, Shaw fancied that Root’s eyes were still following the code that she had yet to write. Sure enough, as soon as Root had finished she pulled out her laptop and started typing again.

However, about half an hour later, the tapping stopped. This came as something of a surprise to Shaw, who had become accustomed to it over the course of the day. A quick glance at Root revealed that she hadn’t finished, though. She’d fallen asleep, her chin tucked against her chest.

Shaw slowed the truck down and gently moved Root’s hands so that she could get the laptop, which she then put away so that it wouldn’t fall down and get damaged. Then she drove on, leaving Root to sleep.


	6. Chapter Six

About half an hour later, Bear began to get restless. This was understandable, given that he’d been cooped up in a car for hours, even if he’d slept through most of it. Root had probably taken him for a brief walk after she had rolled the unconscious drunk out of his truck, but that wasn’t really enough for a dog like Bear.

So, seeing that Root was still asleep, Shaw pulled over to the side of the road, got out and put a leash on Bear. She then proceeded to walk for precisely 1 minute away from the truck before turning back. If Decima turned up now, she wanted to be within easy reach of Root. So she walked back, overshooting the truck by a minute’s walk each time. Bear didn’t seem best pleased by this arrangement, but he was a well-trained dog.

While she walked, Shaw thought Root. While Shaw had been perfectly happy to follow orders, she didn’t think that she could handle the blind faith with which Root followed the Machine. Root’s mysterious smile irritated her almost as much as her quip about being a sociopath had, she didn’t think she could –

Hold on. Root had known that Shaw was going on that ‘date’ with Greene.

Except Greene had later turned out to be Decima. As identified by Root.

Root was careful. She had to be. You didn’t do what Root had done for years and not get caught without being careful. If someone was going to ‘date’ Shaw, Shaw didn’t doubt that Root would have carried out an extensive background check into Greene. She had to have found that Greene was Decima. And, knowing that, she had let everything go ahead anyway.

Except that didn’t make sense. Root wasn’t Decima. While Shaw couldn’t quite bring herself to fully trust Root, she trusted her not to be Decima. Root wouldn’t abandon the Machine. There was no plausible reason that Shaw could come up with that would explain why Root would permit Decima to get so close to them.

Then Shaw remembered that she had first met up with Greene the day after Root had dropped by to have her ear examined. Shaw hadn’t been able to make anything of that meeting, but if she had been to see Greene, threaten him somehow… Root had admitted that she had tortured some Decima agents in order to find out what Samaritan was doing. She’d tried to torture Shaw before, too, to find out about the Machine. She knew that if anyone was capable of turning a Decima agent, it would be Root.

But that still didn’t explain why. Shaw couldn’t understand why Root would want Decima to find them.

Shaw strode back to the car, fully intending to wake Root up and make her answer her questions. However, when she actually saw Root there, still asleep, Shaw remembered what Root had said earlier about the Machine only giving her information in stages. If Greene had been a Decima plant, in order to track down everyone at once, then he would have to have a cover story. A good one, probably one that Greer had specially designed to hold up against Samaritan, and by extension the Machine. It might be possible that Root just hadn’t known about Greene.

So Shaw decided to not to tell Root what she was thinking, not yet. Not until she had worked through it all in her head. No until she came up with a good reason for Root to do what she had done. 

Root woke up when Shaw started the ignition. She didn’t sit bolt upright or anything as dramatic as that, but she her eyes did open wide and she temporarily looked like she didn’t know where she was. A second later, though, once her mental faculties had kicked in, she instantly reached for her laptop and began coding again.

“Have a nice sleep?” Shaw asked neutrally.

Root shrugged. “It was fine, as naps in a truck go.”

“How long as it been since you last slept, anyway?” Shaw asked innocuously.

“Thirty-six hours or so?” Root said. She didn’t sound sure, which Shaw took to mean that Root didn’t actually know when she’d last slept.

However, thirty-six hours ago, this entire situation with Decima hadn’t even begun. There was no need for Root to have gone without sleep for that long, possibly longer, unless she was organising something.

Root rubbed the back of her neck absently. “I don’t tend to sleep much.”

On the other hand, it could be that Root was insomniac. Shaw knew well enough that whenever she had seen Root in her cage, she had been awake, no matter what hour it was. Shaw knew that, with Decima actually after her, cultivating some paranoid habits was probably good for her. But that didn’t mean that she needed to see conspiracies everywhere.

~*~

They drove on for a few hours more, until night fell. When it did, Root gave directions to a little motel.

“We’re stopping?” Shaw asked, surprised. “I thought we were going to drive all night.”

“You need your sleep, Sameen.” Root pointed out. “Besides, She says that this is where we need to be right now.”

“I can go without sleep for a couple of days, if I have to.” Shaw countered. “But with Decima after us, wouldn’t it be better if we stayed on the move?”

Root shook her head, repeating “She says this is where we need to be right now.”

Suddenly, realisation dawned. “Decima isn’t after us, is it?” Shaw said. “It’s all you. I don’t know why, but Decima doesn’t know a thing about us.”

“What are you talking about?” Root said innocently. It seemed as though she genuinely didn’t know, and it was this more than anything else that convinced Shaw that Decima wasn’t involved in this at all. Root didn’t ever look innocent. Even when she had been in the Faraday cage all day and there had been no possibility of her having done something, she still looked like she had done something she shouldn’t.

“Root, after everything you said this morning about being upfront about what you want, just tell me the truth. I’ve heard enough lies in this job. I don’t need to hear more from you.” Shaw said tiredly. “I promise not to kneecap you until you're finished.”

Briefly, Root looked like she might deny everything. Then she sighed and said “Yes. Okay. Greene wasn’t Decima. Neither were the people who came looking for you at the hospital.”

Shaw sighed. “What is it about me that makes people want to manipulate me? I mean, Wilson did it and killed Cole, and now you're doing it too. And you killed Greene. Not that I actually liked Greene, mind you, but killing someone you hired is overkill, if you don’t mind the expression.”

Root tilted her head. “Manipulate you? This has nothing to do with you. I needed Harold to get to the Machine. That’s all. I’ve always wanted to set it free, and now that Samaritan is online there’s actually a reason for him to do that. But Harold is… cautious. He wouldn’t go near the Machine except as a last resort. Unless he had a cast-iron reason.”

“So you killed Greene right in front of him and made him think that Decima was after us.” Shaw said, nodding. It made sense. Finch wasn’t like her, or Root, or Reese. Seeing someone killed right in front of you was very different from seeing it through a camera. For someone like Finch, it would’ve made the entire situation that much more real.

The thing was, she understood exactly why Root had done what she had done. Samaritan needed to be stopped, and it needed to be stopped soon. Finch didn’t have time to try and find other options. If the Machine could help even slightly, then he needed to do everything he could to make it happen.

But Root had killed Greene, who was apparently someone that she had hired. Shaw hadn’t particularly liked Greene, and she wasn’t bothered by the fact that he was dead, but killing someone working for you was distasteful. She knew all about that.

“Greene actually was a psychiatrist working at your hospital, you know.” Root said, watching Shaw intently. “I didn’t plant him.”

“So how did you turn him, then?”

Root shrugged. “He had a brain tumour, six months, a wife and a two year old son. He got it diagnosed two days before I visited you at the clinic.”

Shaw nodded. Brain tumours could be ugly, especially at the end. Putting a family through that – she understood why Greene would want to avoid that. Especially seeing as how she was sure that Root had paid his family handsomely for his services. It made sense. Everything made sense. Which was somewhat annoying, because Shaw had just begun to start trusting Root, despite herself, and then she pulled something like this. Shaw was tempted to shoot her just for the principle of the thing.

“So, now that I’ve finished, and you haven’t shot me, are we, going to go in?” Root said, gesturing at the motel.

Shaw looked at it. It was a typical motel. It probably charged by the hour. She looked back at Root, and remembered when they'd had drinks at the bar filled with people they’d just taken out. “No, I think I’ll stay in the truck. You can go ahead and see what the Machine wants.”

Root didn’t say anything, she just turned around and walked up to the motel. Shaw watched her for a few seconds before taking Bear for a long, long walk.


	7. Chapter Seven

Shaw began to think that it might’ve been a good idea to join Root in the motel. Not because the truck wasn’t exactly the most comfortable place to spend the night, or because she thought she could do with a shower after spending all day in it, or because she was hungry and there might be food inside. All of these were contributing reasons, to be sure, but the primary one was that Root had said that they should be inside.

Shaw might not entirely trust Root, but she was a soldier. If there was a job to do, then she did it. She shouldn’t turn her back on it just because of a little thing like someone lying to her. It hadn’t stopped her before, although it had led to a rapid change of employer.

Still, Root could take care of herself. She might not be able to fight worth a damn, but she could certainly handle herself in a firefight and she was quick enough with her Taser (Shaw had first-hand knowledge of that) that no one should be able to get close.

Besides, even if Root’s manipulation had been entirely aimed at Finch, the fact remained that she had used to Shaw to accomplish it. Shaw didn’t appreciate being used. The fact that she understood why Root had done it was irrelevant. Between co-workers, there needed to be trust. Shaw was good, but she couldn’t do everything by herself. She trusted Reese and Finch to have her back. She’d trusted Root that far, too, after Anchorage. If she couldn’t trust Root, it didn’t matter a great deal if Root was trying to take down Decima. Root wasn’t doing it because it would prevent one man from access to… well, basically everything. She was doing it for her own reasons, which were incomprehensible to Shaw. And once those incomprehensible reasons were accomplished, Root would go her separate way.

Better that Root start that early, now that Finch was even now heading to do what Root had been trying to do for years.

~*~

Shaw didn’t notice when she fell asleep. She only woke up when sun began streaming through the front window.

Shaw woke, and was momentarily baffled by the sight of a pair of legs draped over the windshield. It took her a moment to realise that they were Root’s. Shaw suddenly felt glad that Decima wasn’t after her, because if she hadn’t noticed someone climbing on the truck while she had been inside it, then it wouldn’t have been hard for a couple of agents to kill her in her sleep.

Shaw got out, and wasn’t unduly surprised to find that Root was sitting on the roof, typing away.

“Morning, Shaw.” Root said absently, not looking up. Shaw noticed two things; firstly, that Root had a red mark on her cheek that would almost certainly develop into a spectacular bruise, and secondly that that was the first time that Root hadn’t called her Sameen.

“You alright?” Shaw asked, pointing at her cheek.

Root touched it gently, as though she had forgotten is was there. “Yes, I’m fine.”

“So, you dealt with whatever it was?”

Root slid down onto the truck’s bonnet. “I did.”

“What was it?” Shaw asked curiously.

“A number. Someone who had a remarkable attraction to women. Any woman.” Root said. “Let’s say that he won’t be bothering any more of them.”

Shaw left it at that.

“There’s a gas station a few miles down the road.” Root added. “If you're hungry.”

Shaw nodded, and slid back into the truck. Root got in a second later.

However, before they got to the gas station, Root looked up for a second, then put her laptop away. When she was done, she said calmly “Stop the truck.”

Shaw thought about ignoring her, but she recognised that tone of voice. Generally, when Root sounded like that it meant that the Machine had just told her something, and she should go along with it because it would end up better for her if she did. So she stopped the truck.

A jeep came roaring out from behind some bushes at the side of the road. Had Shaw not taken Root’s advice, it would’ve slammed right into the truck’s cab.

“Well, that was fast.” Root said neutrally. She pulled a pistol out of the glove compartment, opened the door and got out. The jeep was busy fishtailing around so that the people in the front had line of sight on the two women. However, shortly after the driver managed this, Root shot him. First through the shoulder, and secondly in the throat. The second man in the passenger seat shot at Root, missed, and then died.

Root got back in the truck.

“So, I take it that those weren’t more people that you’ve hired.” Shaw said.

“No. I guess Decima caught up to us a little faster than I'd planned.”

“Well, I’d have thought that when I shot someone in broad daylight that would’ve blown the cover you made for me. I'm surprised they didn’t catch up to us sooner. Well, I thought they'd already caught up to me, but that turned out not to be true.”

Root waved away the unspoken accusation of negligence. “I'm more careful than that, Shaw. None of the cameras caught anything. I'm guessing that Samaritan figured out what I did and fixed my hack.”

“Well, it’s good to know that you’re careful.” Shaw said blandly. 

Root looked at Shaw. She had an odd expression on her face. Shaw waited for her to say something, then, when it became clear that she wasn’t going to, said impatiently “What are you staring at?”

“Why’d you believe me?” Root asked. “I gave you every reason last night not to believe a single word I say, yet you stopped the truck and accepted that those guys were Decima without question. Why?”

“What? Are you saying they’re not Decima?” Shaw asked, surprised. She hadn’t even considered that Root had lied (again) although she realised that that should probably have been her first thought. She wondered why it hadn’t been.

“No, but that’s not the point.” Root said. “The point is, why did you believe me?”

Shaw opened her mouth to answer, then shut it again when she realised that she didn’t know what to say. Eventually she said “Can we not get into this? We should clear the road. Something like this is as good as a neon sign above our head to Decima.”

Root looked away. “We don’t need to. Decima will find us, now. It doesn’t matter what we do. Our only chance is to get to California before they catch up to us.”

“It’s still a day and half just to cross the border. It would be less if someone hadn’t decided to stay the night in a motel, but I don’t think we can stay ahead of them that long. They won't send only two men next time.”

“Where’s the nearest airport to here?” Root asked.

“I think its-“

“I wasn’t talking to you, Shaw.” Root interrupted. She paused for second, then said “Okay, Shaw, drive us there.”

“Where?”

“The airport you were just about to suggest.” Root said, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“What? The Machine knows what I'm thinking now?”

Root smiled mysteriously. “She knows everything, Shaw. You should know that by now.”

Shaw shrugged. “Fair enough.” She drove off, absently tapping her thumb against the steering wheel as she did so. As soon as she noticed what she was doing, she stopped. Shaw really wasn’t the sort of person to fidget.

Root had instantly retrieved her laptop and was once again typing rapidly. She wondered if Root even read through what she coded, because she only seemed to type. The incessant tapping was beginning to get on her nerves, now. Shaw ran her fingers absently through her hair.

Suddenly Shaw asked “Why did you ask?” Shaw was surprised. She hadn’t intended to speak. The words had just kind of slipped out, which wasn’t at all like her.

“Why did I ask what?” Root asked mildly.

“Why I believed you.”

Root frowned slightly, but didn’t stop what she was doing, let alone look up. “I thought we weren’t going into that.”

Shaw shrugged again. “Let’s just say that I don’t like puzzles and leave it at that.”

The corner of Root’s mouth quirked upwards. “Then I think you’re in the wrong line of work.”

“Probably. But you're avoiding the question.”

“You’re not the only one who can decide not to talk about things, Shaw.” Root said in a tone of voice that suggested that that was as much as she was willing to say in this conversation.

Shaw, however, wasn’t the sort of person to let something drop just because the other person didn’t want to talk. She wouldn’t have gotten very far in her old job if she was. “Look, you’ve got a sociopath interested in what you're thinking. Do you have any idea how unusual that is? Normally I couldn’t care less what other people are doing, let alone why.”

“Why, Shaw, I'm flattered.” Root said.

Shaw scowled. “Stop avoiding the question.”

Root sighed. “You're really not going to let this go, are you?” Shaw shook her head. “I don’t know what sort of answer you're fishing for. Perhaps I don’t like puzzles either.”

Shaw paused for a second. “No, I don’t think that’s quite it. See, you have some major trust issues. I'm guessing, in your line of work, you can't trust anyone and no one can trust you. So you're surprised when someone who had precisely no reason to trust you still believes you.”

Root rubbed the bruise forming on her cheek. “That’s basically what I said with a lot of supposition tossed in. That’s sloppy thinking, Shaw.”

“Yeah, but I’m right, aren’t I?”

“I asked because, for the next few days, we’re going to be each other’s shadows, because if we don’t look out for each other, we’re not going to get through this alive. So, you trusting me is useful, because I'm going to tell you to do things and you're going to need to do them quickly without questioning me.” Root said. “Is that enough of an answer for you, Shaw?”

It made sense. Shaw would have expected anything less. When Root troubled to give an explanation for her actions, they generally did make sense.

However, Shaw still thought that Root was lying. She had avoided the question for too long and come up with too reasonable an excuse for it to be anything other than a lie.


	8. Chapter Eight

They were about twenty minutes away from the airport when Root put away her laptop and said “Let me drive.”

Shaw decided not to question this. She knew that it would be futile. Besides, even though Root had been lying earlier, she had been right. It’s best not to question your received intelligence. So she slid out and walked around while Root moved into the driver’s seat.

However, when they stopped again, it wasn’t at an airport. It was at a shady part of town, the sort of place that Shaw or Reese would normally end up in if they after a drug dealer or something like that. Most of the buildings were either abandoned, warehouses, or business fronts for people whose business would most likely be raided by the police if it was located anywhere else.

“Uh, Root?” Shaw said. “This isn’t the airport.”

Root didn’t pay her any attention. Although she had stopped the truck, she hadn’t turned off the ignition. She appeared to be thinking, or listening to the Machine. Neither option was particularly pleasing.

Shaw prodded Root in the shoulder. Root jumped slightly, as though she was surprised that Shaw was there. “Yes? What is it?”

Shaw realised then that Root hadn’t heard her. While Root had been in the passenger seat, her good ear had been next to Shaw. Now that they had swapped places, Root hadn’t been able to hear her over the truck’s engine. So Shaw said “I thought we were going to the airport. What changed?”

Shaw fully expected Root to admit that she didn’t know, that the Machine hadn’t told her that much. She didn’t expect Root to simply say ”Things.”

“Things?” Shaw repeated incredulously. “That’s the best you can come up with? Things?”

“Yes. Things. I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain these things to you, Shaw. Try and use that imagination of yours to come up an explanation of what those things might be.” Root said coldly. Before Shaw could think up an answer, Root had left the truck.

Shaw quickly followed suit, just in time to catch the submachine gun that Root tossed her. Shaw looked at it. It wasn’t hers, or Reese’s, or even from the arsenal that had been kept at Finch’s library. She’d never seen Root use anything other than a handgun or a Taser. She wondered where Root had gotten it, and what exactly she expected Shaw to do with it.

“Don’t ask questions.” Root said, just in time for Shaw to swallow those very queries. “Don’t speak. Just try to look dangerous.”

Shaw scowled. She didn’t have to try and look dangerous. She was carrying a submachine. It came with the territory. Then she thought of something. "What about Bear? I'm guessing we'll be leaving him here."

"He'll be fine." Root replied. "I put food under the seats, and I'm pretty sure he can manage a few days in there."

"We can't bring him with us?" Shaw said, wondering when exactly Root had stashed the food and where she had gotten it from.

"No, Shaw. We can't bring a dog where we're going."

With that ominous statement, they walked a couple of doors down, and then Root knocked on the door of an unprepossessing warehouse. A hatch slid across, and a pair of beady eyes peered out. Upon seeing Root, the hatch closed again. A few seconds later, just as Shaw was wondering whether she should try shooting through the door (it didn’t look thin enough for her to hit anything through it with a submachine gun) it was opened by an enormous and heavily armed thug.

Shaw wasn’t all that surprised by this. She had met the geek squad that Root had put together for herself. She seemed to have a knack for making useful contacts.

This place, however, was the sort of operation that she or Reese would probably try and take out. That, and the fact that the person evidently knew Root, meant that this place was somewhere that Root had been in her old life. The life in which she had been a killer for hire.

Root led Shaw through into an office. Shaw noticed that the thug was following them. She fought the urge to shoot him. It probably wouldn’t go down well.

Sitting behind a desk in the office was a petite blonde, maybe a little older than Root.

Root nodded at her. “Sally.”

“Well well well. If it isn’t Root.” The blonde (presumably Sally) said. “I haven’t seen you in years now. I thought someone had finally caught you.”

Root shrugged. “You know me.”

Sally smiled, as though what Root had just said had been a joke. “Why, yes I do. So, looking for a job, are you?”

Root shook her head. “No. I need to get to California, without being seen. Faster is better.”

Sally ignored this. “I see you’ve gotten yourself a new pet.” Sally said, staring at Shaw with a lot more interest than she was comfortable with. “What is she? Some Army brat? What's a girl like you hanging out with a girl like that?”

“California, Sally?” Root said gently.

Sally’s gaze snapped back to Root. “California’s a long way, sweetie. Travel would be… expensive.” She looked back at Shaw. “Are you sure you can pay?”

Root shrugged again. “You can take my fee for my next contract rather than the percentage you normally charge, if you like.”

“Well now.” Sally said, eyes lighting up. “I guess this is important to you, hmm?”

Root didn’t bother denying it. “I guess that means I’ve got you over a barrel.” Root didn’t deny this either. “Next five contracts. And you take whatever I give you, none of that choosy crap you normally pull.”

“Fine.” Root said tiredly. “Just so long as you can get us to California.”

“As it happens, I do have a shipment of cargo that I need to get into Mexico.” Sally pronounced the word cargo as though she would rather call it something ruder. Shaw wondered what she was transporting. “I'd planned to take it through Texas, but for that kind of money we can do California instead.”

“Fine.” Root repeated. She sounded like she would like nothing more than to leave this place and never come back.

“Of course, if it’s invisible you’re after, you're going to have to travel with the cargo.” Sally smiled wolfishly. “But I wouldn’t worry about that, as long as your pet actually knows how to fire that piece of hers.”

Shaw pointed her gun at a nondescript stretch of wall and fired a handful of bullets. There was a sound which was exactly like bullets breaking through a fake partition and hitting a gunman behind said partition. This wasn’t surprising, because that was exactly what had just happened.

Shaw then spun around and pointed her gun at the thug’s head, who froze in the act of pulling out a gun.

“I know what I'm doing, thank you.” Shaw said with icy politeness. “And I was a Marine, not Army.”

“Root.” Sally said, matching and overmatching Shaw’s coldness. “The price just doubled. And I suggest you keep your pet on a tighter leash. I'd hate it if she had to be put down.”

Root smirked. “I suggest you take us to our transport now, Sally.”

~*~

The thug led them to another truck, unlocked the back doors and threw them wide open.

Shaw had expected it to be full of drugs, or guns. It wasn’t. 

It was filled with women.

They weren’t tied up, but they didn’t try to escape. Several of them were bruised, and one that Shaw could see was sitting hunched over as though she had a few cracked ribs. Evidently, they’d already found out what happened when they did try.

“Well, ladies.” The thug said smugly. “Here’s your ride.”

For Shaw, it wasn’t an uncommon occurrence that she wanted to shoot someone. It was, after all, why she’d been so good at her old job. Right now, though, it took every ounce of will in her body not to shoot the thug now and burn this entire operation to the ground.

But she didn’t. She followed Root, picking her way through the overcrowded space, and she hated that, right now, right here, she couldn’t do anything.

The door closed behind them, and they were left in the dark that stank of fear. The truck started.

Root pulled out her laptop and began typing again, but Shaw didn’t have that luxury. All she could do was sit there.

A few minutes later, Root bumped into Shaw. Shaw assumed that Root had moved because the truck had turned a tight corner, and thought nothing of it. When Root did it again a second later, Shaw assumed that Root was shifting herself to get as comfortable as she could, given the circumstances. Again, she didn’t think anything of it.

However, when Root did it again, Shaw rounded on her, planning on taking some of her thinly veiled anger out on the other woman. However, when she turned to face her, Shaw caught a glimpse of her computer screen.

Unlike every other time Shaw had seen it, the screen wasn’t filled with lines of code.

It had something written on it, though.

Whoever opens the door, shoot them.

Shaw was about to ask about that when she realised that the reason that Root had typed the message was because Sally’s guys had to have a camera in here.

She also realised that anyone who opened the door would either be Sally’s people, in which case Shaw would shoot them just on principle, or Decima, in which case she would also shoot them on principle. It was good to know that she wasn’t going to be leaving these women to their fates. She knew exactly where she and Reese would be headed, if Root’s plan worked. This organisation would go the same way as HR or the Russians.

Still, Shaw thought as someone started crying quietly, hopelessly, these women couldn’t know that, and it was still a long way to California. This really wasn’t going to be a pleasant trip.


	9. Chapter Nine

Eventually, when people did come and open the doors, Shaw shot them. To give her time with Finch and Harold its due, she did think about just shooting them in their kneecaps. She also thought about shooting their knees, their elbows, their feet and their hands. She didn’t like what these people were doing, not at all.

However, she decided against such a radical action and merely killed them instead. It was only after a moment that she realised that they weren’t Decima, which was good. It meant that Samaritan might not know where they were. At least for the moment.

“Okay, everyone!” Shaw called. “You’re all free to go. Feel free to make your way to the police, or to a hospital if you like. When you tell your story, feel free to keep me and my friend out of it.”

They didn’t need to be told twice. The women, not quite believing what was happening to them, took the chance to get as far away from the truck as they possibly could.

Shaw turned to Root and was about to speak when the thug who had guided them through Sally’s place showed up, presumably having gotten out of the driver’s cab. “What are you doing? You-“ he said, before trailing off into a gurgle. This was because Shaw had just driven the butt of her gun into his solar plexus, and was just spinning it around so that she could shoot him in the head when Root put her hand on Shaw’s arm.

“Don’t.” Root said gently.

Shaw paused. She wasn’t quite sure why. She really, really wanted to shoot the thug. She also wanted to go back and see Sally and shoot her and then burn her organisation to the ground. She had never liked people traffickers. But instead she paused, waiting for Root to make her case. This was, after all, her show. Root was the one with all the information.

“What you’re going to do now, Franklin, is go to an airport and get the first flight back to Sally. Once you’ve done that, you’re going to go to the truck that’s parked about a block away from Sally. There’ll be a dog in it, which you’ll take to a kennel. If you don’t, then… well, you’ve seen what Shaw here did to your friends. She’d very much like to do the same to you. So I suggest you take good care of that dog, because if you hurt it then I can guarantee that Shaw will hurt you. Got that, Franklin?”

The thug, who seemed as surprised at being called Franklin as at Root’s order, nodded weakly.

Root smiled faintly. “Good. Shaw, let him up.”

Somewhat reluctantly, Shaw let him stand, although she treated him to her best ferocious scowl before he scurried away. She was also comforted by the fact that Bear would almost certainly be taking several large chunks out of the man when he actually got there.

Speaking of biting things. “So, Root, how about lunch?”

Root seemed somewhat surprised by that. Shaw guessed that lunch wasn’t usually what people thought about after spending hours in the back of a truck filled with women who think they’re off to be slaves in some third world country. But Shaw was hungry, and it was lunch time. What was she supposed to be thinking?

Eventually, Root nodded. “Sure. I could eat.”

Shaw followed Root. They walked a couple of blocks away, before turning into an apartment building. Shaw was somewhat surprised by that. She had expected that they would dash into a supermarket or something, buy a couple of sandwiches and eat them while they headed to wherever it was that they were going. Even though they had managed to get to California without Decima showing up, it was only a matter of time before they did. If they came in force, Shaw was pretty certain that neither she nor Root would live to do whatever the Machine needed them to do.

Still, Root had said that it would be easier if Shaw didn’t question her intelligence, so she wasn’t going to. She didn’t say anything when Root stopped outside an apartment, lifted up a plant pot next to door to recover a key and then open the door. She guessed that the Machine was directing things. Root probably didn’t know any more than Shaw did.

“There’s food in the fridge.” Root gestured at a door that Shaw could only assume led to the kitchen. “I’m going to have a shower and change my clothes.”

Shaw blinked, aware that the situation had suddenly become a lot more domestic than she was normally comfortable with. However, she hadn't changed her clothes or even taken them off for about three days now. She could do with a change of clothes, too. And a shower would be wonderful. But food first.

While Root headed off for the bathroom, Shaw looked into the fridge. Thankfully, there was a steak. There was even the makings of a salad for Root. Shaw wasn’t sure if Root actually was vegetarian – she’d let Harold deal with all of that stuff when Root had been in the Faraday cage – but she’d had a salad from the gas station, so it wasn’t too much of a stretch to assume she would want one now. Besides, there was no way that Shaw was going to try and ask Root what she wanted while she was in the shower.

About fifteen minutes later, Root emerged with slightly damp hair and wearing jeans and a shirt that Shaw suspected she’d stolen from whoever owned the apartment. Everything was pretty much ready to dish up by then. Shaw hadn't had the time to prepare the steak the way she generally preferred it, but it was good enough. She hoped that Root wouldn’t comment on her culinary skills. Shaw liked food, but she generally either didn’t bother or didn’t have the time to do more than eat something simple. Now was no different.

After a couple of minutes of eating in silence, Shaw said between mouthfuls “What’s bothering you? You’re not generally the chattiest of people, but this is quiet even for you.”

“It’s nothing, Shaw.” Root said absently. Shaw guessed the Machine was telling her something.

“Oh, I get it. You’re angry at me about something.”

Root paused. For a moment, Shaw wasn’t sure that she was going to say anything, but then she said “What?”

“Normally, you call me Sameen. You’re the only person who calls me Sameen. But ever since the motel, you’ve been calling me Shaw. So I'm pretty sure I’ve pissed you off somehow.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, there’s kind of a lot going on at the moment. I don’t have the time to pay much attention to what I call you. Besides, it’s not like we haven’t both used different names before. Names aren’t really that important, you know.” Root said acidly.

“I’m not the one who threw a hissy fit when Harold called you Ms Groves.” Shaw pointed out.

“We’re really going into this now?” Root said exasperatedly. “If it bothers me that much, I can call you Sameen again.”

“I’m pretty sure that we’re going to going and doing something dangerous later, so if something is bothering you, you should probably get it off your chest. I don’t really want to go into combat when the person who’s giving me my information is pissed off with me.”

Root sat very still. Shaw got the distinct impression that she had offended her somehow. Shaw often got that impression, when she talked to anyone about anything that was even remotely personal. Even besides the fact that personal relationships weren’t something that Shaw was good at, talking to Root was like walking through a minefield. Whereas normally Shaw had a fairly good idea what she had said or done (under Root’s cover at the hospital, she had taken care not to be eating something when telling people bad news) she didn’t really know how to talk to Root. Having spent the last three days or so being almost constantly in her company hadn't helped with that.

“You think that I’d give you bad information.” Root said in an icy voice.

It hadn't been a question, but Shaw decided that she would treat it like one anyway. She thought about it. She thought about it for longer than she actually had to, because the answer had leapt out at her as soon as Root had spoken. Apparently, despite the fact that Root had kidnapped Shaw more than once and manipulated her in order to get to Harold, the answer was no. Shaw didn’t explain all of that, though. She just said “No. I don’t.”

“Then what’s the problem, Shaw? As you say, we’ll be going and doing something dangerous later. What does it matter what I call you?”

“Not a clue.” Shaw said honestly. “But something’s bothering you. At the moment, all I'm doing is eating this not particularly well-seasoned steak. So why don’t you tell me? I'm not good at this sort of thing, Root, but you are. Finch says you hack people as easily as you do computers.” Shaw stopped speaking, not entirely sure about what she was trying to say.

Root looked at her intently for a long moment. “You actually want to know, don’t you?” she said.

Although Shaw thought that Root had been speaking to herself, she shrugged in answer. Root was still looking at her, with an expression that suggested that something interesting and unexpected had occurred to her. Shaw wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not.

Eventually, Root smiled slightly and said “It doesn’t matter, Sameen. Forget about it.”

Shaw was all too happy to drop the subject. She couldn’t help but notice that Root had called her Sameen again, though. She knew that it could have simply be in response to Shaw commenting about it, but Shaw didn’t think so. It had seemed more like it had just slipped out. She didn’t know what to make of that.

“Anyway.” Shaw said. “I’m going to have a shower, now. You might want to have a nap, or something. I doubt you’ve been trained to go without sleep.”

Root paused before answering, which told Shaw everything she needed to know about their chances of surviving this. “There’ll be plenty of time for sleeping after we’re done.”


	10. Chapter Ten

When Shaw returned, she was mildly surprised to find that Root was sitting on the table, not doing anything. Her laptop was nowhere in sight. Shaw’s immediate response was to check the room more thoroughly, in case she had missed something during her first automatic cursory inspection. When she saw that she hadn't, Shaw realised that Root was almost certainly listening to the Machine.

Root looked up, and smiled faintly. Shaw wasn’t sure whether that was a good thing or not. “It’s time to go, Sameen.”

Unlike most people when they’re told that they will shortly be breaking into a base filled with people who would happily shoot you on sight and probably know that you’re coming, Shaw wasn’t nervous. Not just because she was a sociopath, but because she had done this sort of thing before. It had been her job. In a manner of speaking, it still was. But she was still somewhat surprised that they were going now. She had suspected that they'd be breaking in after dark. When they'd broken into the New Jersey facility, there had been a power cut throughout New York, Greer was being held by Vigilance and Shaw had still had to knock out a guard. She knew that they needed a distraction that would be at least as good as that, if there was to be a chance of getting Root and letting her finish whatever she needed to do. Let alone getting out again. “Can’t. We need time to prepare a proper distraction. We at least need to wait till it gets dark.”

Root’s smile didn’t change. “Come on. There’s some people I want you to meet.”

A thoroughly nonplussed Shaw, who was no longer sure if they were going to Decima or not, followed Root outside, to a car which Root expertly jimmied open and then retrieved the keys from the glove compartment. Courtesy of the Machine, Shaw supposed. She didn’t ask where they were going, assuming that they were under orders from the Machine and that Root wouldn’t be able to tell her anything helpful.

However, when they pulled up outside something that looked very much like a drama studio, Shaw couldn’t keep quiet. “This is where Decima is keeping Samaritan? What happened to some high-tech guarded facility?”

“This isn’t Decima, Sameen. This is where you get to meet our distraction.” Root said. She was still smiling, and Shaw got the distinct impression that it was because Shaw didn’t have any idea what was going on. “Come on.”

Root went inside. Shaw followed, after a moment’s hesitation. She disliked going into a building when she didn’t know what she was letting herself in for. Shaw was just in time to see Root nod at a receptionist behind a desk, who greeted Root with “Miss Thrun.” This led Shaw to believe the only connection that this place had with Decima was Root herself. She was clearly known here, which was something of a surprise.

Shaw sped up to catch the taller woman as she walked through a side door, which led to a small theatre. There was a raised stage, and perhaps a hundred seats. The front few rows were filled with about twenty people or so, who were talking amongst themselves but instantly went quiet when the pair came in. Shaw’s hand automatically went to her concealed pistol.

“Hello, everyone.” Root said pleasantly. She shot Shaw a glance, clearly telling her to leave her gun where it was. “I know it’s been a while, but I'm glad that you could all make it. As you know, I'm planning on making a small, independent action film. Well, here is the person who’s going to help us make this whole thing happen. Everyone, I’d like to introduce you to Daphne Koller. Daphne, my theatre group.” There was an excited murmuring from the theatre group as they all stared at the newcomer.

‘Daphne’ waved, a little stiffly, then hissed out of the corner of her mouth “We need to talk.”

“Now, if you could all go through your warm up exercises for a few minutes while I talk to Daphne, that would be great.” Root turned to Shaw. “What’s the problem here? You needed a distraction, and here’s some people who will do whatever you say, because they think they’re going to be actors. What else could you possibly want?”

“They’re civilians, Root! They’re going to get themselves killed. We’re going to get them killed. The only way that they’re going to be of any use would be as cannon fodder, and even then we’d be better off it was just me with a sniper rifle. And maybe a grenade launcher.”

“I don’t think you understand.” Root said calmly. “Greer knows we’re coming. Decima will be prepared. I need ten minutes in there. Just ten minutes, but there’ll be guards everywhere. I can get past a few, you know that, but once I’m working… and I need you to make a distraction so I can get in. These people would make a better distraction than anything you can come up with by yourself, Shaw. Even if you did have a grenade launcher.”

“Root, you’ve never had to work with civilians. You were a killer-for-hire. You killed civilians. You know how thick they can be. They’ll just get in the way, and then they’ll get killed.” Shaw replied. “And we only have a few handguns and a sub. I can’t storm a base with just that. Not even if we go in separately and you’ve got your Taser. We would be better off if we went and bought an arsenal. Maybe some mercs, too, ‘cause they'd definitely be better than this bunch.”

Root’s smile made a reappearance, which irritated Shaw. “You didn’t check the trunk of the car.”

Shaw blinked. “Damn, Root. We’ve only be in the city about five minutes. When did you have the time to get an arsenal?”

Root just kept smiling.

“What do we have, then?” Shaw said, interested despite herself. She still felt that there was a high chance that they would get killed and accomplish absolutely nothing, but at least she could do it well-armed.

Root told her. 

“Hmm.” Shaw said. She knew what the most effective distraction would be. She could arm a few of the actors with guns and let them fire them near the Decima facility. Decima, already on high alert, wouldn’t have any qualms about mowing them down, which would give away their positions so that Shaw could shoot them, which would have the added benefit of causing panic because, if she was very careful, they wouldn’t know where they were being shot from. Meanwhile, Root could sneak in while the guards were trying to find out who was firing at them.

But on the other hand… 

~*~

Shift Supervisor Michael Carter was busy keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. His superior had told that there would be, and he’d been shown pictures of two women who were supposed to provide some sort of threat to the company. He hadn't been given any details, but then, he didn’t need them. That wasn’t his job. His job was to make sure no one got in, and to that end he had ordered more patrols, to make sure that they even made it to the front door. Meanwhile, he was sitting with a security guard watching the surveillance footage.

“Sir?” a voice came in through Carter’s radio. “There’s something going on outside. You might want to take a look.”

“Show me the outside feeds.” Carter said to the security guard, who promptly pulled them up.

People were running towards the building. About twenty, in all. None of them were the people that he’d been warned about. They were waving their arms and shouting something.

“Scare them away, Officer.” Carter said into his radio. “Today’s not the day for this.”

“Sir, they’re screaming that someone’s going to kill them. They want to come in, so that they’re safe. What am I meant to tell them?”

“There just happens be some killer herding people here, today? No. It’s a distraction. Make them leave.”

“Yes, Si- oh Jesus.”

Carter didn’t have to ask what was going on. He’d seen it on camera.

One of the people had gone down in a fountain of blood. There was no shooter, at least not one that was obvious. “Find the gunman, Officer! Find them, and take them out.”

“Yes-“ There was a pause as another one of the people was shot. Most of them had reached the building by now, and they were being held off by guards who looked like they would quite like to get inside too. It was one thing being willing to kill yourself so that you’re loved ones got a stupendous pay check, but it was quite another to be standing outside while some hidden gunman was mowing down people in cold blood. “-sir.”

More people were collapsing, lying in puddles of blood. Still, Carter couldn’t see a gunman on the footage. In fact, he could only hear one shot at a time, which didn’t explain why more than one person was dying at a time.

“It’s goddamned murder out here, sir. Permission to withdraw?”

Carter had been in the military, as had most of Decima’s private security. He knew that when a sniper was picking people off it was generally a good idea to go somewhere that would make that impossible. There wasn’t anything he could do about the people being shot. He certainly wasn’t going to risk any men checking to see if any of them were still alive. They’d just get shot too. Carter changed his radio’s settings so that all his men could hear him. “Retreat. Everyone, fall back.” He watched the last of the civilians getting shot. “Damn it, get the hell out of there!”

Carter watched his men get back inside. To his surprise, the sniper didn’t do a thing. He wondered why, briefly, before the answer came to him.

“Get out of there!” Carter roared, pulling up the feeds from inside the lobby. He was just in time to see a flash of light that whited out a couple of frames of footage. He knew that his men probably couldn’t hear him, but he still yelled “It’s a stun grenade! Get out! Get out!”

He watched helplessly as a woman walked into the room and began shooting his men. She wasn’t killing them, Carter noticed, but they certainly wouldn’t be chasing her with their knees shot. Then she looked up at the camera, smiled, and vanished.

Carter slumped back in his chair. He’d recognised the woman. She was one of the women he’d been warned about. And now she was inside. She had neutralised the perimeter force and gotten inside. He didn’t know how she had erased herself from the feeds, but there were more guards inside. He knew that she shouldn’t be able to access anything important.

“Sir?” said the guard next to him, tentatively. “You should see this.”

Carter looked despondently at the monitor. He saw that the people that he had seen shot were getting up, dusting themselves off and walking away. It was then that he realised just how masterfully he had been played. “Blood packets, Officer. I bet there wasn’t even a sniper.”

He knew that there was no way that the woman should be able to do anything to threaten the company. There were just too many guards. Nevertheless, Carter wouldn’t be surprised to find that, if he went down to the computer labs, to find the woman sitting calmly at a computer surrounded by kneecapped guards.


	11. Chapter Eleven

Shaw sat in a room that was almost, but not quite, opposite the Decima building. She was looking at a mirror hung on the opposite wall, in which anyone leaving the building would be shown. If that person wasn’t Root, then, well, Shaw was holding a sniper rifle, and she was a very good shot.

However, although Shaw was fully engaged in this activity, she was thinking about Root. Not about what she was doing in the facility, or whether she would be able to get out unharmed, because Shaw couldn’t control either of those things and there wasn’t any point in worrying. Not that she was actually capable of that, in the first place. Shaw was thinking about how meticulously Root had planned this entire event.

Root had to have come to California as soon as she had hacked Samaritan, in order to have met her acting group and convinced them they were going to be in a film. Shaw wondered exactly when she had found the time to ‘convince’ a Decima agent to tell her what Greer was doing. Shaw also suspected that the apartment that she and Root had gone to was actually owned by Root, and the car had obviously been Root’s because Shaw doubted that anyone else carried an arsenal that included blood packets.

Of course, that begged the question as to why Root had waited a whole month to put the plan in motion. The answer could be because the Machine had told her, but Shaw had to question how much the Machine was actually involved in this. Admittedly, the Machine had given them McCourt’s number so that they could kill him, but he hadn't exactly been innocent. Greene had been, and Shaw didn’t think that the Machine would condone manipulating Harold, even if it meant that it got set free. Shaw doubted that Root would ever actually tell her exactly what had gone into making this plan work.

However, Shaw kept coming back to a single detail. For much of the latter part of their journey, things had seemed to be getting away from Root. Shaw didn’t think that Root had planned to go to Sally for help. Shaw was used to being around people who didn’t exactly open up about their pasts – she was guilty of that, herself – and Root was no exception.

But the thing was, if the plan had begun to unravel, then why had there been a second set of clothes in Root’s apartment? Root was several inches taller than she was. There was no way that the clothes which Shaw was wearing right now would fit Root.

Shaw could come up with two answers to that. The first, that Root was ridiculously prepared, was entirely possible, knowing her. The second was that Root had been sharing the apartment with someone. Not because she needed to money, because Root had been a paid killer for years and Shaw knew what the going wage for that sort of work was, but because she wanted to. This Shaw doubted, because Root was effectively married to the Machine (if you could even call the strange symbiotic relationship that they had marriage) and also because Root didn’t actually seem to like people all that much.

In any case, when they got out of this, they were definitely going to be having a talk. Even if Shaw had to take a leaf out of Root’s book and Taser the other woman.

Root had given Shaw a cell, telling her that she would contact her when it was time to move. Shaw had contemplated asking how having a phone could possibly be a good idea, given Samaritan’s propensity for listening to absolutely everyone through every possible medium, but had simply assumed that Root had done something. She was a very talented hacker, after all.

The phone rang, and Shaw put it to her ear. She didn’t say anything, because she had been told not to.

“Hello, Sameen. Leave the building through the back exit, and turn right. Proceed until you come to the second turning, which you will take. Do not bring any weapons.” The line went dead.

Shaw put down the phone. She didn’t like the idea of not having any weapons, but she complied with that for the simple reason that she was pretty sure that the person who had just spoken to her hadn’t been Root. Oh, it had sounded like Root, it had been Root’s voice and the cadence had been perfect. It sounded exactly like Root would sound if she said those words. But the thing was, Root wouldn’t have said those words, not like that. It had sounded more like a satnav. Which left Shaw thinking that she had just been given orders by the Machine.

As Shaw removed all the weaponry that she had on her and put them reluctantly on a table, Shaw was wondering if that was how the Machine always sounded to Root. She’d heard from Reese and Finch that it normally sounded like sound clips from a myriad different people. If it was different for Root, if it sounded like Root to her, then that put an incredibly narcissistic spin on her earlier thought that Root and the Machine were married.

Shaw followed the Machine’s directions. She didn’t know what she had expected to find, when she had made that turning, except possible to be greeted my Root with that infuriating smile of hers, who would then tell her that everything had gone according to plan but that she had to leave without explaining exactly what had happened, leaving Shaw feeling really frustrated and like she might possibly shoot Root the next time she saw her.

What she hadn't expected to see was Root kneeling on the ground with her hands behind her head, the entire road blocked by cars behind which stood an assortment of cops and Decima’s private security, all of which had a dazzling array of guns pointed at them both.

Shaw came to an unpleasant conclusion. She hadn't just received instructions from the Machine. She’d just heard from Samaritan. Which meant that they had failed, and they almost certainly weren’t going to be making it out of this street alive. She wondered if Reese and Finch were okay. She supposed she would never know.

“Ah, Ms Shaw.” A voice boomed out. Greer. Shaw tried to locate him, before realising that doing so was futile because she didn’t have any weapons and she wouldn’t make it even a step before being mown down. “How nice of you to join us.” He wasn’t there, Shaw realised. The man behind all of this, the man who they were trying to stop, couldn’t even be bothered to show up in person. Even Wilson had been better than that. It made her angry.

“Perhaps you would like to tell us what your colleague hoped to accomplish?” Greer asked. Without waiting for a reply, he said “No? I didn’t really think so. Still, it isn’t important. Samaritan is running as smoothly as ever, and its diagnostics will uncover whatever it is that you hoped to achieve.”

Root was smiling. It wasn’t the smile she had when she was being deliberately mischievous. This was the one she had when she knew something that the other person didn’t. This came as something of a surprise to Shaw, although it probably shouldn’t. Root was Root, after all.

Apparently, it also surprised Greer, because he asked “Do you have something to say, Ms Groves?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just that if you kill me, Samaritan will see it. And I’ve left a little surprise for you if that happens.” Root said cheerfully.

Greer paused for perhaps a fraction of a second. “You are lying. Kill them both.”

Gunfire. Lots of gunfire. Possibly an explosion, although Shaw wasn’t entirely sure about that. She suddenly had herself pressed up against the ground, and she couldn’t quite remember how she’d gotten there.

It was not until sometime later that Shaw discovered that someone had indeed been shot, and that someone had been herself.


	12. Chapter Twelve

There was no official report filed about the gunfight between the Decima operatives and the corrupt cops that Greer had bought off on one side and a group of ex-SAS led by a man called Alistair Wesley on the other. The story did not make it into any newspaper. No reporter even heard about it. The few witnesses were intimidated into silence by a branch of the government so secret that it may, in fact, not exist at all. 

Shaw didn’t know anything about this, because she was unconscious, bleeding, dying in the middle of the street.

Nor was she aware that she was given emergency medical attention by a man who had once been a Combat Medical Technician in the Royal Air Force, which managed to stop her bleeding out from multiple gunshot wounds and allowed her to hold onto life long enough to make it to a hospital where she could be given better care.

Nor was she aware that, while she was undergoing surgery to remove what bullets could be removed and treat the damage they had caused, the world had changed. She did not know that, throughout the USA, people were finding that they could no longer access their bank accounts. They could, however, access other peoples. Specifically, the accounts belonging to those who had allowed Samaritan to run, and those who had given it life in the first place. 

Nor did she know that every online media outlet now rerouted to an anonymous article which spoke at great length about the invasion of privacy which had been carried out by a private organisation at the behest of certain members of government. These figures were directly named, along with proof that they had wilfully colluded in this invasion. Senator Garrison, Congressman McCourt and John Greer were among the names listed. Control was not. Many underground organisations were quick to take the credit, just as many sought to distance themselves from all accusations. 

Shaw did not know, as she lay in a coma fighting for her life, that the article told the world about the prototype AI known as Samaritan, which Decima Technologies had created in order to carry out this mass surveillance. It also told everyone that Samaritan had, apparently, malfunctioned. Rather than passively watching everything, it had actively ascribed everyone an identity which was not their own. It had, in fact, given every US citizen the identity of the men and women who had had a hand in releasing it into the world.

Understandably, this caused chaos. There were riots. This continued even after a group of technicians solved the problem and returned everyone their own identities. The fact that they were in fact lying at the behest of Control was irrelevant, because the Machine had fixed the problem. Government was in upheaval, with members being placed in jail and others quick to proclaim their innocence while knowing that their reputation was irreparably tarnished by these events.

Eventually, though things settled down. Decima was dismantled, and everyone who had been involved in it was imprisoned. Except for John Greer, who was now the most wanted man on the planet. Shaw didn’t know any of this.

It wasn’t until many days later, when she awoke to find Harold sitting by her bed and Reese standing guard by the door that she found out any of this. Even then, she wasn’t quite sure what had happened, or how. None of them were. None of them knew what would happen now. Perhaps more importantly, at least to Shaw, no one knew where Root had gone. She seemed to have vanished. She certainly had never arrived at the hospital.

~*~

Time went by. Finch brokered a deal with Control, in which the Machine would continue to work as it always had. Questions were raised about the Machine’s capabilities, now that it was no longer hobbled, but no one could answer those. Shaw healed, slowly. Root remained absent. Greer remained elusive, despite the Machine’s best efforts.

~*~

Shaw didn’t like being left out of the action. Admittedly, sitting with a sniper rifle trained on a dangerous drug dealer while Reese went in undercover to investigate the extent of the operation wasn’t particularly out of the action, but she still felt as though she was being left out, and she was tired of that. She’d been bedridden for weeks, and this was her first time out in the field. It wasn’t as though the pain from her mostly-healed injuries was even that bad, and besides, she kind of enjoyed it. She felt as though she should be down there, in the thick of things. Still, she understood why she was being side-lined, at least temporarily. Even if she didn’t like it.

As she sat there, ready to shoot if Reese’s cover got blown, she became aware of something.

There are many ways to tell if someone was in the same room as you. You could hear their footsteps, or their breathing, or even the whisper of cloth against skin. Those are just the most obvious.

In Shaw’s line of work, it wasn’t unusual for people trying to sneak up on her. Generally professionals who knew enough to be able to sneak properly. She had enough experience to be able to sense if someone was standing nearby, if they shouldn’t be.

Shaw didn’t spin around, ready to shoot. She simply said “You’ve gotten better at that.”

“Nice to see you too, Sameen.” Root said.

Shaw didn’t turn, didn’t look at the other woman. Reese might need her. “Where’d you go, Root?”

“Here and there.” Root said airily. “I’m sorry I left you.”

Shaw didn’t reply. This was her first time in the field since she’d been injured, and it didn’t really seem like much of a coincidence that Root chose now to turn up. She wondered, is she looked at Root, she would see the tell-tale marks of someone recovering from a gunshot wound. She didn’t look. “What happens next?”

The answer was a long time in coming. “I don’t know.”

Shaw smiled. “Good answer.”


End file.
